EU Designates Apple App Store, iOS, Safari as Gatekeepers That Must Comply With Digital Markets Act

The EU has named six companies that are designated as gatekeepers under its Digital Markets Act (DMA). These companies will have six months to comply with the full list of do's and don'ts under the DMA for each designated service. For the App Store, this means Apple will be required to allow sideloading of apps, third party app stores, outside payment services, and more.

The European Commission has today designated, for the first time, six gatekeepers - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft - under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In total, 22 core platform services provided by gatekeepers have been designated. The six gatekeepers will now have six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations for each of their designated core platform services.

Under the DMA, the European Commission can designate digital platforms as 'gatekeepers' if they provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to core platform services. Today's designation decisions follow a 45-day review process conducted by the Commission after the notification by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft and Samsung of their potential status as gatekeepers. In particular, the Commission has established gatekeeper status with respect to the following specific core platform services:




Additionally, the Commission has opened four market investigations to further assess Microsoft's and Apple's submissions arguing that, despite meeting the thresholds, some of their core platform services do not qualify as gateways:

● Microsoft: Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising
● Apple: iMessage

Under the DMA, these investigations aim to ascertain whether a sufficiently substantiated rebuttal presented by the companies, demonstrate that services in question should not be designated. The investigation should be completed within a maximum of 5 months.


In addition, the Commission has opened a market investigation to further assess whether Apple's iPadOS should be designated as gatekeeper, despite not meeting the thresholds. Under the DMA, this investigation should be completed within a maximum of 12 months.

In addition, the Commission has concluded that, although Gmail, Outlook.com and Samsung Internet Browser meet the thresholds under the DMA to qualify as a gatekeeper, Alphabet, Microsoft and Samsung provided sufficiently justified arguments showing that these services do not qualify as gateways for the respective core platform services. Therefore, the Commission decided not to designate Gmail, Outlook.com and Samsung Internet Browser as core platform services. It follows that Samsung is not designated as gatekeeper with respect to any core platform service.

Gatekeepers now have six months to comply with the full list of do's and don'ts under the DMA. If a gatekeeper does not comply, the Commission can impose fines up to 10% of the company's total worldwide turnover, which can go up to 20% in case of repeated infringement. Systematic infringements could empowered the Commission to adopt additional remedies such as obliging a gatekeeper to sell a business or parts of it or banning the gatekeeper from acquisitions of additional services related to the systemic non-compliance.

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